


Stirrings

by nordreys, SharpestRose



Series: Rescuers [2]
Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nordreys/pseuds/nordreys, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been less than a day back at the CIA compound before Steve Rogers takes Erik and Charles aside and says "Forgive me for overstepping, but there need to be some changes here as soon as possible."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stirrings

**Author's Note:**

> by Audrey (art) and Mary (words)

 

When he wakes, it's dark and quiet and warm. He hasn't been this warm for a long time.

 

Steve sits up, trying to get his bearings. The last thing he can remember is talking to Peggy on the radio, promising her a date they'd both known he'd never keep.

 

He feels as if he's promised a lot of things, during his time as Captain America. He hopes that he's lived up to the important ones, at least.

 

"You're awake," a voice says. 

 

It's familiar and yet not, like the half-shadowed face Steve sees when he turns toward the noise. A man sits in a chair beside the bed, his tone and expression displaying a mix of kindness and efficiency that is more than simply vaguely familiar.

 

It should be impossible. 

 

But Steve's been trading on impossibilities for a long time.

 

A long,  _long_  time, if the look of wonder and hope and happiness on this half-recognised stranger means what Steve thinks it does.

 

"Erik?" he asks, voice clear and even, a complete counterpoint to the confusion Steve feels. "Magnus?"

 

The man nods, wiping at a stray tear distractedly. Steve's up from the bed and grabbing Erik in an embrace before the man's had a chance to draw breath, and gets a huffed laugh of surprise in his ear as a result.

 

"My memory didn't overestimate your strength. I wondered if it might have done."

 

"How? What?" Steve asks, not even knowing where to begin. He's never been good at questions. He pushes Erik out to arm's length, studying how the years have shaped his face from a boy's into a man's. 

 

"It's 1962," Erik answers, even though Steve hadn't made it to 'When?' in the dumb questions list yet. "Come and see the world you saved." 

 

***

 

They've been less than a day back at the CIA compound before Steve Rogers takes Erik and Charles aside and says "Forgive me for overstepping, but there need to be some changes here as soon as possible."

 

"What do you need?" Erik replies immediately, his face attentive, and Charles has to bite his lip to keep from grinning. It's wonderful to watch the way Erik's body language has changed since Captain America awoke, an almost imperceptible tension draining away from Erik's posture. 

 

Charles tries to imagine what it would be like, to go decades without anyone. To be alone for so long, and then suddenly to be a brother once again. To have lost family restored. 

 

"The staff here need to be changed out for men who are comfortable around mutants," Steve tells them. "Not that I'm not grateful to have been found, but what's the point of this Cerebro if the mutants you find with it are being brought somewhere just as fraught as the world you're rescuing them from? The way some of the agents on duty here look at Hank and Raven is..." 

 

Steve's mild, friendly face darkens a little in anger. "It isn't right. Your sister should feel comfortable looking like herself. Hank should feel that he never again has to lie about who he is. Anyone on these grounds who has a problem with that shouldn't be on these grounds anymore." 

 

Charles expands the reach of his mind for a moment, listening to the hum of the various CIA staff's thoughts. There's disgust and fear scatted throughout many of the brains he can hear. 

 

Charles was aware of that, somewhat, but chalked it up to shock of the new. In time, humans will begin to accept mutants. Of course they will. It's natural that they should feel concern at first.

 

But Steve is right. Raven and Hank and whoever it is that they find, out there in Cerebro's net, shouldn't have to deal with the slow and painful lessons that humanity will have to learn. Not here, not if it's ever to feel like their home. 

 

He takes a deep breath. "Right then," Charles says to Erik and Steve. "Let's go see about that, shall we?"

 

***

 

In the end, they collect four more: a young man who can adapt his genetics to his circumstances; a girl who can fly on delicate, iridescent wings and spit acid; a young man with the power to send out wild and powerful arcs of energy from around his body; and another young man, whose voice can shatter glass and disrupt almost any matter it encounters to one degree or another. 

 

Steve does nothing to discourage -- in fact, in small ways he does his best to  _encourage_  -- it when the now-six young people all begin to give one another 'hero names'. 

 

If they can think of themselves as extraordinary, it will help them find pride and meaning in the things which make them unique. 

 

If the world can have a Captain America and a Magnus, why can't it also have an Angel, a Banshee, a Darwin, a Havok, a Mystique, and a Beast? 

 

Under the watchful eye of the carefully picked new staff, Steve and Charles and Erik do their best to give the younger group a better sense of how to manage their powers. 

 

"Adaptation and survival are more than simply reacting to circumstances," Charles, ever the professor, explains to Darwin. "Sometimes it might mean being a better predator, a faster and more efficient killer. It can mean having better methods of protecting the rest of your... your pride, I suppose. Your flock. Your family, your team. Your survival and their survival are connected.

 

"Until now, your physical changes have been based on examples from the animal kingdom. But think of how limitless your choices are, now that we know how unexpected and wonderful mutations can prove to be. Your power could mimic that of Hank's, if your survival depended on extra hands. Or... or maybe even mine." 

 

"What, read minds? I doubt I can mimic that. My power doesn't know what your brain looks like compared to mine," Darwin points out. 

 

"Perhaps not all of my powers can be replicated, no. But I imagine you could be taught some of my simpler party tricks. Let's give it our best try, shall we?"

 

***

 

The CIA's efforts to locate the Nazi war criminal Shaw lead them to Russia, to a low hill just in sight of an officer's mansion. 

 

"Being a hero has an attractive travel package, no matter what else there might be to say about it," Erik quips to Charles. Charles smiles -- more often than not, he can't help but smile when Erik speaks -- but makes an exasperated turn-up of his eyes as well. 

 

"Being a hero has a compulsory wisecracking element I fear I'll never be equal to," Charles counters back. It makes Erik smile one of his wide, sharp smiles. He likes Charles a lot. 

 

Life as a public hero is not an automatic stumbling block in the way of friendships and love affairs; more than a few of Erik's colleagues have managed to have rich and happy personal lives. But he's always let the job be all he needed. He's not afraid of needing people; he's just never been intrigued enough by anyone to bother.

 

Charles intrigues him.

 

"I spent my adolescent years learning the fine art of the offhand remark from Bucky Barnes. It would be a disservice to our fallen soldiers if I didn't take up his teachings," Erik says, and earns another eyeroll. 

 

With Steve miraculously alive again, Erik has found himself mourning Bucky all over again. He has to re-learn his grief for his friend, now that it's untangled from the grief he'd had for Steve's loss. It feels very strange to extricate one from the other, when they were always one and the same in his heart before. 

 

Emma Frost, Shaw's favourite operative, greets the Russian officer and follows him into his home. There's no sign of Shaw himself, which is a disappointment. Still, no reason to write the mission off entirely. 

 

"All right, I'm bored of this," Erik announces to the small handful of operatives they've got along with them. "Let's go visiting, shall we?"

 

Moira gives him a look of utter poison. "Our orders are to stay here."

 

"Our orders are stupid, then," Erik retorts. Charles snorts a laugh. He's told Erik before that the way Erik interacts with Moira reminds Charles almost exactly of how he and Raven often snipe at one another.

 

"Come on," Erik says, and starts down toward the building. He hears Moira make a noise of outrage, and then Charles' apologetic "I can't leave him." 

 

Erik lets himself have a small moment of contentment at that, as he directs his soldiers out around the building. It feels good to have a friend in Charles. 

 

When they find Frost, it's in the midst of chaos. The Russian officer is unconscious, sprawled across the sofa, an occasional moist snore rattling from him. She's clearly pushed him into the sleeping state with her mind-control abilities, in order to remove at least one element from an already complicated situation. 

 

A dark-clad soldier -- clearly an elite operative from his look and equipment -- stands over Frost, a gun pointed at her, stilled and trained on her with needle-fine attention.  His back is to the door.

 

It's almost as if he's awaiting further orders, and will not move until those orders are received.

 

Frost herself is in her diamond form, a huge flaw disrupting the facets of one thigh, the cracked crystal splintering shards of rainbow light in all directions.

 

 _'She's been shot',_ Charles says into Erik's mind.  _'If she becomes flesh, she'll bleed out in minutes, but if she tries to move in this form she runs a strong risk of shattering'._

 

 _'Can you remove the soldier from the equation?'_ Erik asks in reply. 

 

 _'He has sophisticated mental blocks in place. His whole personality seems to have been bricked away out of reach. The only name he knows himself by is the 'Winter Soldier'.'_

 

 _'He's a notorious and shadowy Soviet operative, then,'_  Erik tells Charles. _'The US government has thought he may be some sort of super-soldier equivalent, but nobody's got close enough to confirm and then survived. I can feel... one of his arms is a complicated metal prosthetic; I should be able to...'_

 

The Winter Soldier's arm jerks up abruptly, two steel fingers striking a point on his neck. The man collapses into a dead faint immediately.

 

 _'Impressively precise'_ Charles thinks with a grin. 

 

Erik grins back as they step into the room, but his smile falters as he glances down, and for the first time sees the Winter Soldier's face.

 

***

 

The attack on the compound catches them unaware but not unprepared. As soon as the sickening crack of falling bodies sounds, Steve and the others are all on instant high alert. 

 

Banshee and Angel take to the sky without hesitation, doing all they can to save the agents who are teleported and then dropped. Angel spits at the red-skinned mutant whenever she manages to flit into range of him, but the airborne pair alone are a reactive and insufficient force against the attack as a whole.

 

But Angel and Banshee are far from alone in their defense. 

 

Havok's powers are the wildest and least reliable of the team's, so his role is a largely human one, helping the CIA agents on-site as they fan out in the faint but determined hope of taking out Shaw's small but devastating strike force. 

 

Darwin shifts his form to make his own spit into a coagulant, to stop the bleeding of those already injured. It's gross but efficient and affective, and Steve is pleased to see Darwin think of a solution like that. Mystique copies his form and begins applying the same treatment to more of the hurt agents. 

 

Steve's so proud of these kids. He knows most of the people in his own generation are now spendng their time lamenting how useless this new wave of young people are, but Steve thinks that this weird, smart, brave little force is as worthy as any he ever fought with. 

 

He and Beast are conferring on the best way to evacuate when Shaw finds them. The man's dressed in a strange, somehow ominous helmet, but removes it within moments of finding the pair together.

 

"Protects me from telepaths," he explains in a chillingly conversational tone. "But with yours away for the day, it's a useless precaution."  The look he gives Steve is reptilian in its coldness. "You're looking good for your age."

 

"I could say the same for you. But you never looked especially good," Steve counters. He thinks of Erik, bright brave Erik, and is almost overwhelmed with a sense of horror at the thought of that long-ago laboratory, and all the things this man might have had planned for that boy and his mother. 

 

He cannot let Shaw take even one of the children. To do so would be as great a failure as Steve has ever suffered. 

 

Hank makes a low growl in his throat. It's a surprising noise from such an unassuming, quiet young man, and it catches Shaw's attention, makes him glance away from Steve's eye contact.

 

Then Darwin and Mystique are running around the corner. Mystique is back as herself, her lovely blue Raven-self, and both of the pair are spattered with streaks of blood. 

 

Mystique launches herself at Shaw with a shout and he bats her away as if she is weightless. She lands hard, crying out in pain, but the distraction has worked just as it was meant to and Darwin has gotten in close enough to lock his eyes with Shaw's own scalpel gaze.

 

Shaw freezes in his tracks, held motionless by a party-trick power simple enough for a telepath to teach a mimic. 

 

Steve doesn't wait to see how long Darwin can win in a battle of wills that strong. He pulls his revolver out of its holster, presses it to Shaw's temple, and fires. 

 

***

 

"I won't be able to do it alone. There's too much to untangle and reorder in there. I'll need Ms Frost in there with me, to help keep him placid despite his conditioning."

 

Erik nods. "We'll offer her immunity in exchange for her help." 

 

Moira makes one of the spluttering noises of outrage that Erik's plans seem to reduce her to so often. In other circumstances it would make him smile secretly to himself, but right now he feels quite a distance from the ability to smile. 

 

"You can't just expect the CIA to let an extremely high-risk prisoner go --"

 

"The first lesson I learned about being a hero," Erik tells her, his voice cool and even. "Was that when you have a choice between saving a life and capturing a villain, you  _always_  choose saving the life."

 

And so the deal is put forward to Emma Frost, for her assistance in a delicate operation in exchange for her freedom. Erik is far less worried about the potential repercussions of this than Moira is, because Erik's known more than a few soldiers cut from the same cloth as the icy Emma. Their first and foremost loyalty is to themselves; they'll hitch their wagon to whichever horse will take them closest to where they intend to go. Right now, Erik can offer her far more than Shaw can.

 

Fitting the broken pieces of Bucky's mind back into some semblance of a whole is slow, difficult work. Emma and Charles sit either side of the gurney that Bucky's been strapped down to, their gazes locked on Bucky's ravaged and sedated features, like they can see the ghostly shapes of the thoughts inside his skull. 

 

Erik sits beside Charles, holding Charles' hand for support. It's all Erik can offer, so he's determined to offer it for as long as this takes. Every once in a while, when the task gets especially knotty, Charles holds two fingertips of his other hand against his own temple, breath going a little deeper and his hand tightening around Erik's with the effort. Each time, Erik squeezes back, and shares the hours of silence as they drag by slowly. 

 

***

 

When the job is done as well as it can possibly be done -- the poor man's mind is still a jagged, bitter mess, and Charles' heart aches for the difficult road ahead for Bucky Barnes -- Charles collapses into a deep exhausted sleep, right there in the chair beside the gurney. 

 

He's in a narrow but comfortable bed when he awakens, however, and can tell from the sound and vibration all around that they're on one of the elegant and fast prototype planes the CIA has in development. 

 

Erik's sitting in an ordinary plane chair set against the wall, clothes dark and neat as always an a small set of magnetized chess pieces on a travel-sized board in his lap. He looks up at the sound of Charles stirring.

 

"I feel like a little boy who tried to stay up past bed-time and had to be carried to his room by the nursemaid," Charles says, less embarrassed than the words suggest but still abashed. He doesn't want to be one more thing that Erik has to protect and take care of. He wants to help Erik do the protecting. 

 

Erik just shakes his head, like he knows all the silly insecurities in Charles' head and isn't going to dignify them with refutation. He levitates the board over and deposits it in Charles' lap. "I can play from here. You go first." 

 

Charles thinks about protesting at the distance between them -- one of the things he likes best about playing chess with Erik is the proximity of their bodies across the board, the easy unspoken rapport they share. 

 

Still, his head is pounding from the work of helping Barnes, so staying half-propped-up on the gurney for a little while might not be so bad. 

 

They play one game, and then another, the plane moving endless sleek miles over the ocean. 

 

"We're keeping Bucky sedated," Erik explains when Charles asks. "It seemed the kinder thing to do, until we can get back to America. It has to be Steve who's there when he wakes."

 

"It's the only familiarity it would be possible to provide, and the rest of his return to the world will be jarring enough," Charles agrees. 

 

Erik offers a slight nod, as if agreeing with the words partly but not entirely. "Even if there weren't any other factors to consider, I'd still want Steve to be the one there with him." 

 

They play on in quiet for several more moves before Charles works up the nerve to ask the question foremost in his mind.  "He and Steve were lovers, weren't they?" 

 

"You haven't seen for yourself, inside his mind?"

 

"I kept my intrusion to the minimum it could be, but with the amount of work I needed to do... yes, I caught flashes. I try to give people the opportunity to hold back when I can, however. If you'd lied to protect their privacy, I would have left it at that."

 

Erik settles back in his chair, steady gaze meeting Charles' eyes. "It wasn't such a long time ago in years, but in many ways it was a very different era. They protected one another, they cared deeply about one another. They were brothers in arms. Each would have died in place of the other without a moment's thought or hesitation. They sometimes spoke of their plans for after the war -- they were going to be next-door neighbours in Brooklyn, each with a wife and a handful of children. A quiet, comfortable future mapped out together."

 

"You think that's so different from the kind of dreams people have now?"

 

"I think these days they probably wouldn't have the unspoken expectation between them that their trysts would end after they had married other people. These are scandalous times." Erik gives Charles an amused, slightly teasing smile.

 

Charles laughs as he takes his turn at moving a piece on the board. It's somehow disappointing to have this conversation from such a distance that they have to raise their voices a little to be heard over the sound of the engines, but his mind is too exhausted to switch to telepathy instead. "Perhaps. And what about you? Did you have similar plans for yourself?"

 

Erik gives the question a few second's quiet consideration before he answers. "I'd like to have children one day," he says. "But as for the rest, I don't know. I have no complaints about my life, but there's been very little to it aside from my work since I was very young. I... don't have much to offer anybody, be it a wife or a brother-of-sorts." 

 

Charles stares at Erik, bemused. "You can't possibly be serious."

 

"If you hadn't spent your formative years gazing at me on a movie screen, you'd see that I'm just a soldier who doesn't know how to take orders very well, has had a bit of good publicity, and can do tricks with metal. Checkmate, by the way."

 

Not bothering to look down at the board -- if Erik says he's won the round, then he undoubtedly has -- Charles moves the game aside and stands up on slightly shaky legs. Erik's standing as well a moment later, stepping quickly across the space between them so that Charles doesn't have to attempt the journey himself.

 

"You should rest --" Erik starts to scold. Charles reaches up and cups Erik's cheek lightly with his palm.

 

"My friend, you should stop trying to take care of everyone else for just a few minutes. Let someone return the favor, for a change," Charles says, voice soft, and presses his smile to Erik's own mouth. 

 

***

 

When Bucky was a kid he was always pretty hardy -- none of the minor discomforts or illnesses that plagued Steve's childhood, much less the major ones. But he imagines that recovering from a bad bout of influenza or pneumonia might feel at least a little like he does when he rises, muddily and slowly, out of unconsciousness.

 

His thoughts are sluggish and addled. Even the hair on his scalp feels like it hurts, oversensitive and uncomfortable. One of his arms is heavy and numb; he can tell the fingers move when he curls them experimentally, but he has no sense of touch from them, no sensation of any kind. 

 

 _Nerve damage_ , he thinks detachedly.  _Shell shock too, most likely. That'd make me feel strange like this, wouldn't it_? He can't remember how he got here, or what happened, but that's not so surprising when he feels like he's been hit by a tank. 

 

"Bucky?" 

 

He opens his eyes, just a little. The room is dim but even that low level of light makes him wince, and he shuts his eyes again. Still, even with only a blurry half-glance to go with it, he'd know that voice anywhere. 

 

"Gotta stop this habit of letting you see me before I put my face on in the mornings," Bucky mumbles, doing his best to grin. "It'll take all the mystery out of my girlish wiles."

 

"I agree. No more letting mad scientists use you as a pincushion, got it? Saving you is eating into time I could be spending asleep." 

 

Steve brushes Bucky's hair away from his face gently. Bucky's still too jangled for the sensation to be anything other than slightly painful, but he doesn't wince. Steve can get skittish if he thinks he's overstepped. 

 

Keeping his eyes closed, Bucky manages a small smile and a shake of his head against the pillow. "Got one word for you.  _Vita-Rays_. If we're talking pincushions, you've done more than I have in that department." 

 

"That's not one word, that's a hyphenate."

 

Bucky groans, laughing at the same time. "Don't. I'm still too beat up for grammar lectures. Here, help me sit up --"

 

He pauses, words dying on his lips. "Steve? Why'm I strapped down?"

 

Steve mutters a very uncharacteristic curse under his breath and there's a series of quick snapping sounds, Bucky's bed jolting a little with each one.  

 

"Here, let's --" Steve says, easing Bucky into a sitting position, propping him up with pillows. Bucky risks another attempt at sight, and finds the half-dark a little more tolerable this time. He squints at Steve's face, in close to his own as Steve fusses with the pillows. 

 

"Did you just tear a bunch of restraint straps open? You really need to stop being such a show-off."

 

"We weren't sure how lucid you'd be when you woke up," Steve explains, answering the earlier of Bucky's two questions. "But it seems like you're okay."

 

"Yeah, okay for someone who got put through a meat grinder, maybe. I miss anything special? You go and win the war while I was out of it, hog all the glory for yourself?"

 

Steve is silent for a moment. "No, I missed that one myself."

 

"Are you for real? The war's over?" Bucky sits up straighter, opening his eyes properly despite the discomfort. His numb arm seems to be encased in a flexible metal cast of some kind. "You punch Hitler in the face?"

 

That surprises a laugh out of Steve. "That would've been a good time. But no, I was out of commission for a while too."

 

"So much for being two of America's elite. I miss anything else? Aside from  _the end of the war_ , I mean."

 

"Howard Stark got married. He and his wife are expecting their first baby in March." 

 

 "My head feels like someone played 52-pick-up with it and then forgot to put the cards back in order," Bucky admits. "I can't think straight all that well just yet. You'll have to give me some slack when I don't remember when it is and other stuff like that for a while. When're we right now?"

 

"It's October, Buck."

 

"How long did I lose?"

 

Steve grips Bucky's hand -- the regular one, the one that can still feel -- carefully but firmly. 

 

"It doesn't matter," Steve tells him. "We're both here now."

 

 

 

 


End file.
